Obama 2011 budget request: EPA

The Environmental Protection Agency's budget -- which ballooned an estimated 34 percent last year, as the Obama administration set out new ambitions for the agency -- would receive slightly less funding in fiscal 2011, according to budget documents.

Under the budget released Monday, the EPA's estimated funding would decrease from $10.3 billion in 2010 to $10.02 billion next year.

But the budget would boost funding for several programs in which the EPA has shown a newly aggressive tone in the past year. It includes $43 million in new funding for efforts to reduce greenhouse gases using the Clean Air Act. Those efforts, which have been controversial on Capitol Hill, follow an EPA declaration last year that greenhouses gases "endanger" public health.

And the budget would add $13 million for the Chesapeake Bay. Last year, Obama promised an overhaul of an EPA-led cleanup program, which despite 25 years of effort and billions of dollars failed to improve the bay's problems with low-oxygen "dead zones."